Monday, November 1, 2010

Mac OS X, including Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6), the latest version of OS X. The trojan horse, trojan.osx.boonana.a, is spreading through social networking sites, including Facebook, disguised as a video. The trojan is currently appearing as a link in messages on social networking sites with the subject "Is this you in this video?"

When a user clicks the infected link, the trojan initially runs as a Java applet, which downloads other files to the computer, including an installer, which launches automatically. When run, the installer modifies system files to bypass the need for passwords, allowing outside access to all files on the system. Additionally, the trojan sets itself to run invisibly in the background at startup, and periodically checks in with command and control servers to report information on the infected system. While running, the trojan horse hijacks user accounts to spread itself further via spam messages. Users have reported the trojan is spreading through e-mail as well as social media sites.

The java component of the trojan horse is cross-platform, and includes other files that affect Mac OS X as well as Microsoft Windows. There have been reports of similar behavior in recent trojan horses targeting Microsoft Windows, but they have not included cross-platform capabilities until now. The trojan attempts to hide its internet communications and actions through obfuscated code spread through multiple files, and will attempt to contact additional command servers if the primary servers are unavailable.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

"The online scuttlebutt says iLife 2011 is coming very soon, dropping iDVD and adding a new app,"

"I think that's about right, and I think that new app may be a hybrid ofFaceTime and iChat. (FaceChat? iTime? Naw, Apple will probably just call it FaceTime.)"

"Right now FaceTime only works iPhone 4/iPod touch to iPhone 4/iPod touch. However, since all Macs but the Mac mini and Mac Pro have built-in iSight cameras (though, obviously, webcams can be attached), it only makes sense to extend FaceTime to our favorite computing platform,"

"All Macs come with iChat, so it might make sense to merge iChat and FaceTime into one app."

"That should move lots of extra Macs. But Apple is offering FaceTime as an open standard, so the company is doubtless figuring Windows systems into the equation at some point in the future."

Our yearly survey reveals just who PCMag readers love-and who they don't-in the world of technology products. Almost 20,000 of you told us your choices for the best across 13 categories, from phones and computers to ISPs and media players. We break it down for you with picks for Readers'

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Apple today released Mac OS X 10.6.4, the fourth maintenance update for Snow Leopard, via Software Update. The update offers a number of fixes implemented since the release of Mac OS X 10.6.3 in late March.

Apple rolled out a relatively major update to the Mac mini. The little headless Mac now comes in a unibody aluminum enclosure like its notebook brethren, and sports a new HDMI port, SD card slot, and improved graphics performance.

With the new casing, the mini is 7.7 inch square and only 1.4 inches thick, including an integrated power supply. This is down from 6.5 inches square and two inches high in the previous model—it appears Apple is trying to get the mini to look a lot like the Apple TV, which is also a 7.7 inch square with an HDMI port.

Both flavors of Mac mini now come with the NVIDIA GeForce 320M, which is the same integrated GPU that comes in the current MacBook (the last mini came with a NVIDIA GeForce 9400M). This, according to Apple, will bring "twice the graphics performance" of the previous Mac mini model. The machines come in either 2.4 or 2.66GHz flavors with 2 and 4GB of RAM as a base respectively, though they can go up to 8GB of RAM with build-to-order options.

Like before, the high-end mini is actually a compact Snow Leopard server, with two 500GB hard drives and no optical drive. That model goes for $999, while the entry-level model starts at $699—a surprising price increase given the relatively minor changes in internal hardware. Additionally, Apple has finally given users an easy way to upgrade the Mac mini's RAM themselves with a circular panel on the bottom for easy access.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Apple released the latest major version of its Web browser, Safari 5, earlier this week. Along with several new features—one of them somewhat controversial—the update was said to pack a number of performance improvements, including DNS pre-fetching and optimizations to Safari's Nitro JavaScript engine. "Safari continues to lead the pack in performance," Apple SVP of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, said in a statement. We decided to put those claims to the test, pitting Safari against leading browsers on both Mac OS X and Windows 7.

Included in our tests are a number of JavaScript benchmarks, including the WebKit team's SunSpider, Google's V8 Benchmark, and Mozilla's Dromaeo. We also took a look at graphics acceleration performance using Microsoft's HTML5 "Flying Images" speed demo. The tests were run on the latest stable versions of Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera on Mac OS X 10.6.3 running on a 3.0GHz, 8-core Mac Pro with 10GB RAM and two ATI Radeon 2600XT GPUs. The tests were also run on Windows 7 on a 2.67 GHz Core 2 Duo PC with 4 GB of RAM and an ATI 4830 GPU. On our Windows 7 rig we had a recent development build of Chrome (as opposed to the latest stable version), and we also ran the tests using IE8 and a developer preview of IE9.

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Overall, Safari 5 is quite snappy, and does feel faster than Safari 4—especially on Windows. Though Safari's Nitro JavaScript engine may have a very slight raw performance advantage, the benchmarks we ran show that Apple and the WebKit team certainly have some areas where it can improve—both in JavaScript performance characteristics as well as optimizing performance for animation and other graphics rendering. All this fierce competition among Apple, Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and Opera for "fastest" browser, though, ultimately benefits all users in the long run.

Apple's strong Japanese iPad launch may have given it a large piece of the entire local computer market, analysts at BCN discovered today. If the tablet is counted as a computer, it would almost triple Apple's market share in Japan from 3.5 percent in April to 11.5 percent in May. The spike would help Apple overtake Sony's 9.3 percent and make it the fourth largest computer company on the island nation....

Friday, June 4, 2010

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1006/textsml.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />SubRosaSoft has released TextCrypt, a security utility designed to protect communication. The software uses a Rijndael AES-128 algorithm to encrypt information sent through instant messages, e-mail, or social networking sites such as Facebook....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1006/webm.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Google today changed the license for its WebM video standard to help shelter users against possible patent lawsuits. It's now been reworded to only deny access to the patents themselves in the event of a lawsuit shutting them down. Previously, the license would have cut off all rights, locking any patent users out of use altogether....

<img align='left' src='http://photos.macnn.com/news/1006/googlegoggles.jpg' border='0' width='176' height='120' />Google project lead Shailesh Nalawadi today told those at the Augmented Reality Event that Google Goggles will reach the iPhone "soon." He didn't elaborate on when this would arrive or in which app but suggested it was finally close to release. The company had teased the prospect of the visual search as long ago as December but had never indicated how certain the release might be....

At All Things Digital, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer admitted having fallen behind in the mobile business, but expressed a hope of reentering the market with its upcoming products. He also took issue with comments by Steve Jobs on the shift away from PCs.

Thirteen fifth-grade students in Florida were given free iPads by Apple, and could appear in a forthcoming advertising campaign after they were photographed excitedly eyeing the company's new hardware.

President Barack Obama has abruptly scrapped a trip to Indonesia and Australia for the second time this year, as he grapples with the calamitous oil spill at home. The president informed both countries' leaders of the change in plans in Thursday night phone...

AT&T Inc.'s decision to scrap unlimited data plans for new customers has prompted a backlash from bloggers and subscribers like Danette Collins. "As soon as I can get out of the AT&T plan, I'll switch to Verizon," said Collins, a finance and operations...